Tm Bioscience receives U.S. patent allowance for Biochip technology

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted Tm Bioscience Corp. (Toronto) a notice of allowance for a patent covering ligand controlled hybridization, the company announced yesterday. This patent provides the company a secure position in applying its Ligand Controlled Hybridization (LCH) technology to DNA-based assay systems, including DNA microarrays/biochips.

"This patent allowance has us well on track in the ongoing process of bringing our biochip/microarray products to market," Tm Bioscience president and CEO Greg Hines said in a company press release. "Our LCH technology effectively resolves a number of problems currently associated with DNA-based assay systems. We anticipate considerable interest in the commercialized products that will follow using this technology."

Scientists at Tm Bioscience have developed novel ligand mixtures to control the performance of biochips, thereby minimizing the likelihood of generating false-positive or false-negative signals. False- positive and false-negative issues have prevented the broader acceptance of biochips.

Tm Bioscience vice president of product development Roman Zastawny added: "The unique features of LCH technology provide a simple and powerful solution to problems related to accuracy, reproducibility and reliability in data obtained from array and non-array DNA-based assay systems. These problems have been significant obstacles to the broad implementation and acceptance of these DNA based technologies."

Zastawny will present data on Tm Bioscience's LCH and other proprietary technologies at "Biochips," a conference sponsored by Barnett International and held in Philadelphia on February 1 and 2, 2001.

Tm Bioscience is a genomics company developing and commercializing proprietary DNA-based technologies for application in biochips (microarrays), diagnostics, and genomic analysis.

For more information, contact Alan Coley of Tm Bioscience at 416-593-4323 or acoley@tmbioscience.com.

With contributions from Jim Pomager
Assistant Editor, Bioresearch Online
Source: Tm Bioscience Corp.